Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience

Accounting for why sensitivity to perceptual input (as assayed by discrimination judgments) is not always accompanied by conscious awareness (as assayed by detection judgments) remains a challenge for theories of perception. Here we test a hypothesis that awareness is supported by higher-order inferences within generative models of perceptual content. In line with model simulations, we show that both detection and discrimination expectations influence reaction times on a categorisation task. By combining a no-report version of our task with functional neuroimaging we reveal a neural dissociation between prediction errors (PEs) on content (discrimination) and awareness of content (detection): content PEs are tracked in posterior sensory cortex while awareness PEs are tracked in prefrontal cortex. Together, our results reveal a hierarchical structure supporting visual detection and discrimination, consistent with a proposal that awareness reflects a higher-order inference within perceptual generative models